Cemetery plans to add 7,500 new burial sites

Veterans Affairs providing $1.6 million grant for Boulder City facility

Hundreds of burial vaults are expected to start arriving at the Southern Nevada Veterans Memorial Cemetery this week as part of the phased development program that is adding at least 7,500 new gravesites at the state-run facility located at Buchanan Boulevard and Georgia Avenue in Boulder City.

The vaults, or crypt liners, are being funded by a $1.6 million grant that was awarded to the cemetery by the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs in July.

The 79-acre facility currently is in its fourth phase of development, with the 7,500-plus new gravesites designated as Part A and the $1.6 million being only a fraction of Part A's total cost of $4.3 million, according to the cemetery superintendent.

"The ($1.6 million) is the initial money they've released or awarded," said Jack Porrino, who runs the cemetery. "When we get closer to the construction portion that's getting real close and we go out and hire a contractor to do construction. The rest of that money will be released in portions."

Part A consists of 1,800 single and 1,800 double-depth lawn crypts, 2,000 niches for cremains stored above ground and 2,000 niches for cremains in the ground. The above-ground niches will be a first for the cemetery, and have been designed with granite facings.

Instead of building the niches in one long continuous row, Porrino said the plan is to build individual clusters of 64 niches with ample space and seating nearby. A 64-niche cluster contains a two-sided structure with four rows vertically and eight units side-by-side on each side.

Part B, the details and cost for which have yet to be determined, will add another 7,500 to 8,000 gravesites.

Porrino estimated that construction of the new gravesites funded under Part A should start within six months.

The site to be developed is southwest of the administration building and chapel in what's now a desert area behind Sections R and N.

Porrino said the 7,500 gravesite number could go up because of a new burial technique where the vaults are placed with sides touching instead of in a larger area that allowed for wasted space between the vaults.

"They were going by the old system of 5-by-10 plots, which was way too much and, besides, those are used mainly for upright headstones," said Porrino. "Now, most places are putting the vaults together, butted together, so you're using maybe, at the most, 4-by-8. That's going to allow us to expand ourselves to 2025 or better."

According to the superintendent, the cemetery has used 16,300 burial sites containing caskets and cremains since it opened in April 1990.

The new Phase 4 expansion, when it's all done, combined with the existing used space will account for 36 acres, leaving more than 50 percent of the site still available for future development.

The Southern Nevada Veterans Memorial Cemetery is run by the state, but remains part of the federal government's National Cemetery System. The federal government provides for national and state cemeteries.

Generally, the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs will fund expansions in its cemetery system at 100 percent, costing the state virtually nothing.

Porrino said the cemetery has had 1,600 or more burials a year for the past couple of years, with the annual number climbing 10 percent each year.

Those burial numbers, he said, gives the Southern Nevada Veterans Memorial Cemetery the distinction of being in the Top 20 of all state and federal cemeteries, and makes the Boulder City facility the second busiest state cemetery in the country only slightly behind a New Jersey state veterans cemetery near Fort Dix.


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